170km to go: “Liam Slock set the internet ablaze recently when he tumbled while crossing the line in winning the GP Gippingen,” wrote William Fotheringham in his pre-race team-by-team guide:

171km to go: Up to 2min for the break.

173km to go: A few riders are stopping for a pee. The gap to the break is out to 1min 14sec.

The three-man break consists of:

Liam Slock (Lotto-Intermarché
Jakub Otruba (Caja-Rural)
Thibaut Guernalec (TotalEnergies).

174km to go: It’s nearly a minute for Slock at the front now. He’s joined by Jakub Otruba (Caja-Rural) and Thibaut Guernalec (TotalEnergies).

175km to go: Slock has 14sec and is joined by two other riders. Looks like we have the day’s break.

Hang on, Slock is still on his own, but I think two others are bridging across. Yes, Otruba is one of them, he was in the break yesterday too.

176km: While acknowledging that no one cares about my Velogames team … Liam Slock is in my Velogames team. Added intrigue for one Tour de France live blogger.

177km to go: Lotto-Intermarché have a bash. A dearth of TV graphics as to who these riders actually are … but wait! It’s Liam Slock out front on his own!

178km to go: Still there is action up front. Again, two riders break off the front … but it’s closed down again and all back together.

179km to go: A couple of riders broke away – one from Caja-Rural – then a much bigger group formed, and the peloton shut it down tout de suite.

“I’m trying to instil a bit of drama here,” says Carlton Kirby, in response to Kelly’s assessment that it will be another relaxed day for the peloton. “A bit of jeopardy … but you’re probably right.”

Less than a kilometre until the flag waves. What are the odds of Veistroffer and AN Other being allowed to slink off up the road?

Stage eight, Saturday 11 July: Périgueux to Bergerac, 180.4km

Another day for the fast men, with only a couple of fourth-category molehills along the way. Expect the usual pattern of a doomed early escape by teams lacking a sprinter or general classification rider: Uno-X, TotalEnergies, Caja Rural. They will be swept up by the peloton late on, but the twist now is that the sprint trains do not like to use up their riders until the last minute, so the final kilometres become a poker game and Merlier’s Soudal are the masters of this. For a winner, pick Philipsen or Merlier or an outside bet such as Girmay or Mads Pedersen.

“Tomorrow is a breakaway day, guaranteed,” opines Sean Kelly on commentary for TNT Sports. “For that reason, I think we’ll see another day like yesterday.”

Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto–Intermarché) is up front next to the race commissaire’s car.

On that team’s radio, the DS says they expect there might be a bit more action at the start today than previous days …

The Tour de France and the heat of the midday sun are old bedfellows, going back long before an era when the biggest catastrophe of the Tour’s opening week was a major fault in the Visma team bus’s air conditioning. Flip back 50 years to my favourite Tour read, the late Geoffrey Nicholson’s The Great Bike Race, and we find the doyen of cycling writers discussing a Tour that began in baking conditions in the Vendée, and continued through the canicule in central France and Normandy.

“The heatwave,” wrote Nicholson, “is becoming a serious worry.” He describes the late Raymond “Pou-Pou” Poulidor as “an old sweat” – pun alert – “in legionnaire matters”, who was “careful to limit himself to two litres of water on a stage … it is part of the collective wisdom of the peloton that too much water leads to depression and fatigue.” Tell that to the Tour men of 2026 as they glug down one bidon after another.

Nicholson harks back to heatwaves now long forgotten; “the summer of 1951 when suffering from the Languedoc sun, Fausto Coppi lost 33 minutes on the stage to Montpellier. More recently, and nearer home, there was the dog- day Tour of 1957 when the baking roads of Normandy forced 66 of the 120 [starters] to retire.”

“It’s a different sprint again,” says Lewis Askey of NSN Cycling Team, who will be riding for Girmay today.

“Some wide roads, leading up to some pinch points. A lot of teams are going to want to be in a good position … all the sprint teams will be thinking the same thing, at the same time … we might have a few more guys in the lead-out than we did yesterday, but it’ll be a similar-ish approach.”

Askey is asked about how teams research the final kilometres for the lead-outs: “We have the videos of everything,” he says. “It’s not that you remember metre-by-metre, but the important things are also getting repeated in your ear [on the team radio].

‘I find it useful to have two or three main points, and if I get those right, everything else will fall into place.

“My focus is follow the guy in front of me, whose job is it to deliver me into the point where I start my job … I focus on his wheel.

“If they do their job properly, I’ll be in the right place to do my job … the hardest thing is getting yourself in that position in the first place.”

On the telly, they’re discussing the dynamics of the sprint finishes: we’ve had two bunch kicks and two different winners, Olaf Kooij and Tim Merlier. I fancy we’ll see a different winner today, and the pressure is on Philipsen to deliver, likewise Biniam Girmay.

“Hello!” writes Bill.

“Now that Pogacar has gotten his stomp on the race and the winners are all decided, I am thrilled to be looking forward to day after day of thrilling heroics from the breakaway groups.

“As you say, those climbs at the end look very tempting. Apart from the heat, what’s the wind doing? I have only have returned from the French Alps and it’s crazy warm there.”

The wind, good question.

Some photographs from Périgueux:

That was an interesting finish yesterday. It’s true that Merlier showed patience, but on the other hand, he also said he felt he’d been boxed in, that he felt he wasn’t in the perfect position to open up his sprint. Would he have won had he been right on Philipsen’s wheel?

Points classification: top 10 after stage seven

1) Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) 204pts
2) Biniam Girmay (NSN) 145pts
3) Max Kanter (XDS Astana) 140pts
4) Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) 134pts
5) Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech) 126pts
6) Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) 75pts
7) Soren Waerenskjold (Uno-X Mobility) 73pts
8) Olaf Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) 70pts
9) Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) 64pts
10) Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike) 61pts

2.5km to go. Surely, Alpecin–Premier Tech won’t cock this up again?

Naturally, I am currently watching the TNT Sports stage seven highlights before the start of today’s live coverage. Netcompany Ineos did a lot of work for what turned out to be eighth place for Dorian Godon.

Will the presence of that uncategorised climb early in the route mean a proper fight to form a breakaway?

Feel free to mail me with your predictions for today, or anything Tour de France-related.

It’s worth noting that the first part of the stage is not pan-flat. In fact, there are two uncategorised climbs bigger than the categorised ones: the riders will reach a dizzying 261m of altitude at Thenon, after 26.2km, then the top of the climb at Sarlat-la-Canéda looks like it’s nearly the same sort of height.